First Aid
by vendettadays
Summary: Lara knew how to do basic first aid, but Sam had insisted, ever since that time in school when she had cut herself with a pair of scissors, that it was easier if she just did it for her. (Pre-Tomb Raider 2013)


**Title:** First Aid  
**Author: **vendettadays  
**Fandom:** Tomb Raider (2013)  
**Characters:** Lara Croft, Sam Nishimura  
**Rating:** T  
**Length:** 770  
**Summary:** Lara knew how to do basic first aid, but Sam had insisted, ever since that time in school when she had cut herself with a pair of scissors, that it was easier if she just did it for her.

* * *

It was three in the morning and Sam was sitting on the sofa, wrapped up in a tartan-patterned blanket up to her eyes. She was glued to the television screen, where black and white images flashed and lit up the dark corners of her living room. Her heart pounded and her grip on the blanket tightened, as she watched a silhouette approach from behind the shower curtain. Her back pushed into the cushions of the sofa in anticipation. She gulped at what was going to happen next. The next scene always got her, no matter how many times she saw it.

The living room door opened with a creaking wail just as the shower curtain pulled back.

Sam screamed and threw the blanket over her head.

'Sam! You're going to wake up the neighbours!'

She stopped screaming when the lights were switched on and stayed under the blanket to calm herself, until she thought it was safe to come out from underneath it. When she surfaced, Lara, for the lack of a better word that Sam did not have in her vocabulary, looked pissed off as she sat down on the sofa. Sam quickly paused the film.

'Can't you watch _Psycho_ a little earlier in the day?'

'It's a classic that has to be watched late at night with the lights off. It's the only way you can really appreciate—'

Sam stopped and gasped when she saw Lara's bloodied hand. Lara was cradling her left hand close to her chest. Her knuckles were scraped and cut and was covered with dried blood.

'What the hell happened?' exclaimed Sam, as she got up from the sofa and rushed to her room to get her first aid kit. The amount of action that the first aid kit had seen in the last few weeks was well worth the extortionate amount of £20 it cost her to buy.

'I had to break up a fight and a drunk guy smashed a pint glass over my hand.'

Sam stared at Lara when she got back into the living room with the, first aid kit gripped tightly in her two hands. Anger boiled up inside her and she wasn't sure if she was angry at Lara, for trying to break up a pub fight, or with the guy who did this to her.

'I'm alright, it's just a grazed hand,' said Lara, in a weak attempt to calm Sam. 'I don't think any glass got in the cut either.'

Sam ignored Lara and sat down next to her on the sofa. She opened up the first aid kit and set up the equipment she needed: rubber gloves, antiseptic, gauze, and bandages.

'Seriously, why are you always the one breaking up fights?' Sam carefully took Lara's injured hand and began dabbing antiseptic on it.

Lara winced at the stinging pain, but didn't make a sound. 'We were closing up and I went over to tell them to leave, but they wouldn't and Steve was busy kicking another group out. Then things went pear-shaped.'

'Please tell me that they called the police this time?'

'Yeah, they did and I'm going into the police station tomorrow to give a statement.'

Sam sighed and shook her head. Everything always seemed to go 'pear-shaped' whenever it involved Lara and her job pulling pints at _The Nine Bells_. If it wasn't fights, it was stalkers and if it wasn't stalkers, it was people trying to get Lara into bed. Sam was secretly keeping an eye out for a part-time opening at the British Library for Lara. Surely, old books and dust would be less of a danger than drunken people on a night out in Central London.

They didn't talk as Sam continued to wipe away the blood, until the cut looked clean enough for her to apply the gauze and then the bandages.

'All done,' said Sam when she finished. 'Just don't get into any trouble that needs stitches. You know how bad I was at textiles in school.'

She laughed at the wide-eyed expression of horror on Lara's face, as she packed everything back into the box.

Lara examined her bandaged left hand before giving Sam a hug in thanks. She knew how to do basic first aid, but Sam had insisted, ever since that time in school when she had cut herself with a pair of scissors, that it was easier if she just did it for her.

'What am I going to do without you?' Lara said into Sam's shoulder.

'Probably get into a lot of trouble and you'll have to start patching yourself up too.'


End file.
